


The Milk of Human Kindness

by Omnicat



Series: Work Ethic [1]
Category: Darker Than Black
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Cats, Fantastic Racism, Food, Fun With Super Powers, Gen, Hei Joins Section Four, Home Run House, Human/Contractor Relationships, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-03 09:28:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11529426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: The Public Safety Bureau has hired a Contractor, and Tokyo is less than pleased. Luckily, Hei was Li Shengshun before he was Officer Li of Section Four, and Li Shengshun was never as friendless as Hei considered himself to be.a 'Hei joins Section Four' AU





	The Milk of Human Kindness

Hei had prepared himself for a worst case scenario, _any_ worst case scenario. So the real thing, when it came, struck only a dull blow, cushioned by a chorus of ‘could have been worse’ and ‘was to be expected’ and ‘wow, this is going _way_ better than I thought it would’.

So a crowd had gathered in front of the Bureau when he came into work on Monday morning. Big deal. There were only two signs – casually leaning back against their owners’ shoulders as the man and woman in question talked to some third party on the phone, completely oblivious to Hei as he passed them by – and he didn’t hear any anti-Contractor slogans being chanted by others either. Odds were that these two were calling in reinforcements, but for the moment, the crowd seemed to be made up of reporters, police officers, and gawkers only.

Gawkers. Hm.

Hei pushed his way through the thronging mass of people as unobtrusively as he could, muttering ‘sorry’s and ‘excuse me’s non-stop and keeping his face averted. He wasn’t recognized. But when he reached the front, dominated by reporters checking their equipment on one side of the yellow tape and uniformed officers on the other, he still hadn’t caught sight of what everybody was looking at and whispering about.

"What’s going on?" he asked the nearest uniform.

The man got as far as, "Please step back and return to your business, sir, a statement will be released through the usual channels later tod–" before he recognized Hei and did a double take. "Oh, it’s you!"

Hei nodded and demonstratively leaned around the officer.

"Uh..." the man said, looking uncomfortable, and took a step to the side.

For a fraction of a second, Hei thought he was looking at a riot of flesh blood, because _obviously_ it would be. Citizens always reacted calmly to scenes like that. That’s why the police let them get so close. Duh.

Then he realized it was red paint.

"Ah. I see," Hei said. "That didn’t take long."

The paint was a little on the orange side, like whoever had done this hadn’t had the patience or insight to go with a more serious and aggressive, intimidating color. It was a sloppy, runny, often badly proportioned mess, but there, on the front wall of the Bureau’s HQ, as high as a grown man or woman was tall, were the unmistakable starts of ‘Pro-Contractor Is Anti-Human’, one of the more common protest slogans, and ‘Remove The Enemy From The Public Security Bureau’, brand new and already rapidly gaining popularity. A large stain on the sidewalk suggested that someone had dropped or kicked over their bucket of paint in their hurry to get away.

At least two vandals, working in tandem, Hei deduced. They hadn’t made it all the way through either phrase, the latest two characters of both left unfinished. Someone working alone would have worked one at a time. Complete amateurs, too. The cameras were obvious no matter what angle you approached the building from. Security must have spotted them before they got two characters in.

Compared to the gruesomely efficient assassination attempts he would have faced three years ago, this was almost funny.

Or it would be, if these had been _his_ walls the protesters had chosen to deface.

Sighing, Hei smoothed out his expression and ducked under the tape barrier and past the uniformed officer. "Excuse me."

The journalists he had squeezed past finally snapped out of the distraction he had been taking advantage of. As expected, the barrage was immediate and the ruckus contagious. The first cries of his name drew the attention of members of the press scattered through the crowd further from him, and soon they were all pushing as close as the row of uniformed officers would let them.

"Officer Li! Officer Li, would you care to make a statement?"

Right now, when he hadn’t had time to run his answers by Kirihara, not particularly. He wasn’t entirely confident they could stay on the same wavelength yet without frequent consultation. But this was his job now. He had chosen to inflict this on himself. He’d been prepared to see it through to the bitter end then; he would deal with whatever you could call _this_ now. And at the core, PR was really just another way of maintaining an undercover persona. Nothing to it.

So he nodded and turned to face the cameras.

"Are those on?" he asked, pointing around at the various lenses and microphones surrounding him. Yes. He looked sternly into the nearest camera. "Very well, then my statement is as follows:

Please be more considerate of public property when you make your displeasure known. The Public Safety Bureau will hear your complaints regardless; all doing something like this accomplishes is cause trouble for my coworkers, who have done nothing to deserve it. That is all."

"Are you worried how this will affect your position at the Bureau?" one of the journalists shouted immediately.

"No," Hei said. "Chief Kirihara and I anticipated this kind of blowback, and much worse. We made the decisions that led to my installment with that in mind and those decisions will not change now."

"What kind of worse opposition are you anticipating?" another journalist asked, loud enough to be heard over the rising chorus of questions and clicking shutters.

Hei pasted a bland smile on his face. "We are prepared for anything up to and including assassination attempts. But if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to work. Thank you."

The chorus rose to an unintelligible roar. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck to turn away from it, but there were no assassins present today but himself, and even _his_ assassination days were officially behind him now.

Starting tomorrow, though, he was going to use a side entrance in the mornings.

"Good morning, Officer Hirosue," he said to the receptionist.

"Good morning, Officer Li," she answered with a strained smile.

He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "I assume we have footage of the people responsible for that?"

"We have them in custody, actually," she said. And then her eyes widened in shock. "Uh, I mean –"

But she didn’t tell him what she meant; just spluttered to a halt and looked at anything but him.

"Good," Hei eventually said, not bothering to hide his confusion. "Then I trust the appropriate departments will take care of fining and processing them?"

Head shooting up, Hirosue nodded fervently. "Exactly! Nothing for you to worry about, Officer Li!"

"Okay. Good. Thank you... I guess."

Even more confused than before, Hei headed for the elevators. It wasn’t until he’d already hit the button that it hit him. But... no. Surely not? He turned on his heel and marched straight back to the reception desk.

Hirosue didn’t entirely manage to hide her deer-in-the-headlights look.

"You didn’t think I was asking because I intended to harm those people for what they did, right?" he asked with not-quite-feigned dismay.

"Uh... no?" Hirosue squeaked.

"Oh," he said dejectedly.

Should’ve seen that coming.

"I’m sorry?"

Really, really should have. The relief that the situation outside wasn’t worse had blinded him.

He conjured up a smile. PR. Fifty percent of his job. Suck it up and set an example. "No, it’s fine. I don’t blame you. Trust has to be earned, and my kind... hasn’t had that opportunity yet. I can only hope I will be able to take the first step toward that goal through my work here. Have a nice day, Officer Hirosue."

He bowed – better to err on the side of formal than seem carelessly insincere – and this time, when he left, he didn’t look back.

 

Visitors had trouble getting past the protesters. Lunch runners were harassed. The First Foreign Affairs Division, operating out of the lower stories of the building, complained about the noise.

The amount of mail, e-mail and phone calls coming in for and about Hei picked up by another order of magnitude today, and it was starting to become an issue not just for him, but for everyone. No piece of postage was being let into the building anymore without getting thoroughly checked for dangerous content, substances, or traces of synchrotron radiation indicating Contractor interference. Meaning the mail was late, routines were disrupted, and the air hummed with dark muttering wherever he went. A nice change from the ‘someone with your criminal record and mental defects does not belong in this organization’ muttering (and sometimes more than just _muttering_ ), but unfortunately it was an and/and situation, not either/or.

It had already been decided that Hei would only spend certain hours of the day answering phone calls, but Kirihara saw forced to call in a second secretary to help her manage hers.

"This won’t last forever," Hei said. "Soon enough, only the real fanatics will still be willing to waste all their energy on me being here, and everything will go back to normal."

Kirihara gave him a dirty look.

"Your words, not mine."

"So go tell it to everybody else instead of me."

"I don’t think the others would appreciate it."

He’d already spent enough time for one day apologizing for the inconvenience he was causing. Any more and he’d start asking _himself_ why he even bothered, and that would defeat the whole point of joining the police.

 

When Hei left that evening, the crowd of protesters was indeed much larger than that morning, and they showed no signs of slowing down. He wondered, without much real curiosity, if they’d all stuck around all day or if they had taken shifts so everybody could take breaks like reasonable people and the bulk came back just to catch him on his way out. Not that he was giving them the opportunity to do that either way; he left through the least conspicuous exit, ducked into the nearest dark alley, and spent the next hour aimlessly wandering the city.

Nobody recognized him in the lamp-lit twilight; avoiding drawing people’s attention was so instinctive it barely took any effort. Breathing deeply from the cool air and the sounds of the streets, he let his mind wander.

He wondered how Yin and the others were taking the news. ‘I think I might visit Tokyo again,’ he’d said. ‘Put my ear to the ground while I’m there, maybe check out this Contractor outreach initiative of Kirihara’s, see if the Contractor they end up with isn’t in some unsympathetic party’s pocket.’

And then, from one special press conference to the next, he _was_ the Contractor Section Four ended up with.

He doubted many of them were surprised, at least.

His feet led him past a mini-mart, and he nipped inside to buy ingredients for dinner. It was a cramped, tightly packed little store. Lots of blind spots even the round mirrors hanging from every corner of the ceiling didn’t help with. The lanky, tired-looking middle-aged man behind the register watched Hei like a hawk from the moment he set foot through the door. Hei recognized the type and abandoned every attempt at making himself inconspicuous accordingly. Another, younger employee was stocking shelves and blowing bubble gum, either oblivious or uncaring of how he blocked every path he moved through.

Stomach growling all the while, Hei loaded his basket up with meat and fresh produce, eggs and seasoning, and hefted one of the shop’s largest bags of rice over his shoulder. His last was already mostly empty.

"Good evening," he said, putting the basket down on the counter.

The older man eyed him intently. "You’re that Contractor from the news."

Oh boy. Back to work.

"Uh, yes," Hei said with a polite smile, and held out his hand. "Officer Li from the Public Security Bureau, Section Four. Pleased to meet you."

The man looked at Hei’s hand like, rather than shake it, he could give in to the urge to spit on it any moment. Hei waited only long enough to communicate well-intentioned but non-forceful insistence before withdrawing to his side of the counter. Just to be safe.

The glint in the man’s eye told Hei he considered it a victory. He planted his hands on the counter and leaned into Hei’s space. "I don’t know what lies you told the police to convince them to hire you, and I don’t care. Creatures like you shouldn’t be allowed to walk free."

"Huh," Hei said, not budging an inch. "I’m sorry you feel that way, sir."

And _that_ translated into a taunt.

"We don’t serve Contractors here," the man snarled.

"That’s a shame," Hei said calmly. "I’ll put these back, then."

He reached for his basket of groceries, but the man snatched it away.

"No you won’t," he said, and pointed to the bag of rice still slung over Hei’s shoulder. "Give that here."

Hei obediently handed over the rice.

"And empty your pockets."

Hei stared. Hard.

The man reached behind the counter and produced a bamboo kendo practice sword.

Hei looked from the man to the ‘sword’ and back. Now he just needed a moment to boggle.

How was it, he wondered, not for the first time, that the people who considered Contractors the greatest threat were so often also the ones with the most inflated and misplaced confidence in their ability to take one on?

"You realize I have no logical reason to steal from you," he couldn’t help but point out. "I receive a perfectly adequate salary, and committing even a misdemeanor like petty theft would be an explicit breach of my contract with the police department and the terms of my plea agreement, which would both cost me my job and land me in jail."

"Don’t try to talk your way out of this, Contractor," the man hissed, pulling his lips away from his teeth and slamming his stick down on the counter. "I said _empty your pockets_."

It would’ve been hysterical if it hadn’t been so hard to keep from feeling humiliated.

 _Suck it up,_ Hei told himself. He had plenty of experience at that. And: _Set an example._ This wasn’t like standing silently by and letting handlers call him a freak and a monster to his face, or staying put in the Syndicate’s laboratories, where he was treated like he had the self-awareness of a dog and still less need for dignity. He had a purpose now. A _reason_ not to make a scene.

(And, he told himself: _It’s nothing you don’t deserve, anyway; if not for the reason people like this think, then for the ones_ you **_know_** _._ It would have been nice if anti-Contractor sentiment was as baseless as literally any other form of prejudice, but Hei’s life had never been that simple, or his choices that noble. Every step on the path that had led him here had been guided by doomed affection and loss and what-ifs, by simple, childish wishes. Righteous anger over his and other Contractors’ lots was an integral part of it _now_ , but in many ways, it remained a distant second to the desire to simply be able to _dream_ again.)

Hei obediently pulled his pockets inside out, one by one, and showed the man the contents.

He started out downright predatory, eager to expose Hei in the act of committing a crime, take him down a peg – either, or, maybe both – but by the end he was seething, visibly straining for something, anything else to hold over him.

Hei didn’t give him the pleasure.

"I hope that satisfies your curiosity, sir?" he said, the epitome of mild-mannered helpfulness.

"Okay, fine," the man snapped. "Now get the fuck out of my store. And never show your face here again or else."

"Very well," Hei said pleasantly. "Have a nice day."

Taking a mental note of the name and location of the store, he left.

 

The protocols Hei and Kirihara had hashed out for him to follow in confrontations with civilians were a work in progress, and would be for the foreseeable future. He knew damn well that you could never anticipate everything. That didn’t stop him from wishing they’d been able to see _this_ coming, though. He started doubting his handling of the situation immediately.

How _was_ he supposed to combine ‘don’t do anything that can be used against you, and through you, against all Contractors’ with ‘don’t let people treat you with any less respect than they would a fellow human being’? One would make things worse, the other would enforce an unacceptable status quo; a little bit of both would leave him spinning his wheels, accomplishing nothing.

It still could have gone a lot worse. But now Hei wasn’t just hungry, he was _hungry_. His body wanted _proper_ food.

Unfortunately, he knew just where to find it. Even more unfortunately, he realized it was only a few blocks away from where his aimless wandering had led him.

 _You’re going to regret this,_ he told himself. _It’s not worth the risk of it blowing up in your face. Don’t do this to yourself._

So of course, his feet were already moving.

A few minutes later, he ducked through the door of the Home Run House, and it felt dangerously like coming home. Bracing himself and putting on his friendliest face, he made his way to the back. The cook – unmistakably the same stocky, bushy-haired, jovial man who had owned the place three years ago – was washing dishes with his back to Hei. What was his name again? Ou... Yasichi? Naoyasu? No, that was Kirihara’s father. Ou Yasusomething.

"Good evening."

"Good evening!" the owner said. He quickly rinsed and dried his hands, and turned to face his new customer. His mouth fell open. "It’s you!"

No immediate fear or hostility. A hopeful sign.

Hei smiled a wistful little Li Shengshun smile. "Long time no see, Mister Ou. Are you still open?"

Ou looked a little stunned, but no more than that. Maybe he hadn’t watched the news or read any newspapers the past few days. Which would make him one of maybe five people in all of Japan who didn’t know about the press conference yet, but Hei was only half a Contractor, he was allowed a little foolish hope now and then.

"I – yes! Of course. Obviously." He leaned through the door leading to the employee-only area of the restaurant. "Rika! Come here and help me, we’ve got a big order coming up." He looked at Hei. "Right? The usual?"

Hei’s smile widened. "Yes, please."

He settled at the table nearest the counter and looked around. It was small and simple and a little shabby, just like he had remembered it.

"I’ve missed this place," he allowed himself to admit. It wasn’t like he’d tried to deny it... for long... but he hadn’t realized how _much_ he’d missed it until now.

"Where have you been, Li?" Ou asked over his shoulder, already bent over a hissing wok. "You stopped coming so suddenly, I thought we’d never see you again."

Hei laughed and scratched his head. "That’s a long story. How’s business been?"

"Notably poorer since you stopped coming around, I’ll tell you that!" Ou said with a hearty laugh of his own.

He half-turned to shoot a look at Hei, obviously contemplating a question, when Rika appeared. She wore her hair longer than she had three years ago, held back in a single braid instead of two. Funny, the things that had and hadn’t stuck in Hei’s mind. He was certain Ou Rika had looked less like a peer and more like Pa– like a little sister, the last time he saw her; but he couldn’t remember if Ou Yasuaki ( _that_ was his name) had had that grey in his goatee. Did normal people living normal lives remember the staff at their favorite restaurant – people who were only doing their jobs – so clearly after three years? So fondly?

Rika took one look at Hei and froze.

"Mister Li?" She looked at her father; her father looked at her; and then, blushing, she ducked her head. "Wow. What a surprise. Hello."

Some part of Hei that shouldn’t be able to hold its breath was holding its breath. A blush could mean a lot of things. And _she_ had obviously watched the news.

He nodded and smiled softly. "It’s been a long time."

"You can say that again," Rika said. "And now you’re a celebrity!"

She laughed at the face Hei made at that. He was almost sure he detected a hint of relief in it. Brushing back an imaginary lock of hair, she emerged from the safety of her father’s side behind the counter and held out her hand. Bemused but high-spirited with relief, he shook it.

"Welcome back to Home Run House, Officer."

"Thank you," Hei said. That knot in his chest finally loosened, and he breathed deeply and gratefully. "You’ve grown, Rika. I forget, are you still in school or are you older than that?"

"I am. Well, my first year of university," she said, shrugging awkwardly. "I’m studying Spanish."

"I see. Everything going well?"

"Yes, thank you." Tugging on the strings of her apron, she returned to her father’s side to help with the cooking. "Your usual order?"

"Yes. I’m amazed you guys still remember me at all, let alone my usual order."

Father and daughter both laughed.

"As if we could forget!" said one, and the other: "The way you ate?"

Little by little, Rika’s nervousness abated, and Hei relaxed. The three of them made small talk while the Ous cooked; about the neighborhood, things Hei had missed while he was away, his job with the police, the trip they had taken to Korea to celebrate Rika’s high school graduation and all the food they’d tried there. It was nice to finally have a conversation like that, with people like this, for its own sake. No agenda or ulterior motive, no nagging little inner voice telling him to mind himself.

At one point, Rika whispered something to her father, who replied "No, no, let’s not, it’s probably rude to them." And that was as close as they got to asking Hei about his Contract directly.

When the first few bowls of zhajiang noodles and pork bone ramen were put in front of him, Hei heaved a heartfelt sigh of contentment, and dug in. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a meal this good.

There were no other customers while Hei ate, but at some point, a young man stopped by to deliver ingredients. He passed right through the center isle of the restaurant on his way to the storage room out back, blowing bubble gum all the while. On his second go-through, his box cart knocked into Hei’s table.

"Sorry," the guy mumbled around his gum.

"It’s fine," Hei mumbled back around a mouthful of noodles.

Their eyes met, just barely – and they both froze.

It was the other employee from the supermarket.

"Oy, kid, that’s supposed to go into the freezer, please don’t dawdle!" Ou said.

Bubble gum guy hurried up to Ou and started whispering heatedly and not-so-subtly jerking his head Hei’s way.

Hei lowered his bowl and chopsticks, his head, and his hopes.

Dammit. _Dammit._

But all Ou said, without even bothering to lower his voice, was: "You think I don’t know that? Maybe _your_ boss turns down faithful customers, but I don’t. Now get a move on before you ruin the appetites of tomorrow’s customers too."

Hei looked up, dumbfounded.

Ou turned back to the stove. The delivery boy hurried into storage and gave Hei a dirty look when he left.

Moments later, Ou approached with Hei’s next serving and set a dish he didn’t recognize in front of him. "Here, try this. It’s a new recipe we introduced just last week. Korean. Or, well, close enough. It’s on the house."

Hei stared.

"Mister Ou..." He shot a look over his shoulder, out the door. "That man –"

"Told me nothing new," Ou said. He sat down opposite Hei. "This is Tokyo, who cares. Though I gotta say, it was a surprised to see your face on the news after all this time. And looking so stern and professional, too! We almost couldn’t believe that was you."

"Won’t something like this harm your business relationship with the supermarket?" Hei asked.

Ou laughed. "If Tamura stopped doing business with everyone who offended him, he’d be a monk by now. Nah, he wants our money too much."

"I must be very special then, for him to turn me away anyway," Hei said with an awkward smile.

"I’ll say." Ou gave him an appraising look. "Hey, how old are you?"

Hei did not like where this was going. "Twenty-five."

Ou nodded contemplatively. "I figured it was something like that. So when the Gates appeared you were, what, twelve?"

 _Yep, there we are,_ Hei thought.

"Man, I keep thinking of Rika at that age..."

Hei looked away.

"Ah, sorry, sorry, rude of me to bring that up," Ou said. He leaned in. "But you gotta tell me one thing. Your ability – it’s ESP, isn’t it?"

Blinking owlishly, Hei looked up. Ou’s eyes were twinkling.

"...electricity, actually."

Ou groaned and leaned back in his chair, slapping his forehead. "Aw, drat, now I owe Rika a thousand yen." Then he laughed and gestured to the bowl of ‘Korean’ food he’d set in front of Hei earlier. "But go on, eat, tell me what you think."

Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth after the day he’d had, Hei dug in.

"This is really good!" he exclaimed after a few bites.

Ou mock-bowed, pleased as punch. "Thank you, thank you."

Hei finished his ‘Korean’ dish and made his way through the remainder of his regular order, and Ou came and went. His newspaper was hidden from sight behind Hei’s mountain of empty bowls, but the single other customer who eventually showed up did have to be served.

Rika had disappeared into the back of the establishment at some point. When she finally returned to clear away Hei’s dirty dishes, Ou dug around in his pockets and handed her her thousand yen.

"Here, you win."

"Ha!" She snatched the bill from her father’s hand and punched the air with it. "I knew it!"

"I really thought it would be ESP," Ou said mournfully.

Giggling, Rika started loading empty bowls onto her tray. "You’re not a psychic, dad. Not every joke you make is ‘uncannily accurate’. So what is it really?" she asked Hei eagerly. "Can you fly? Turn into a bird? Understand every language?"

He was getting a lot of mileage out of Li Shengshun’s self-deprecating laugh again tonight. Scratching his head, Hei repeated, "It’s electricity."

"Hm..." Rika mulled that over while she, with her father now joining in, cleared Hei’s table. "So you can charge up your phone for free?"

Hei just kept on awkward-laughing. Couldn’t go wrong with awkward-laughing. "Yes... and somehow that’s always the first thing everyone thinks of..."

And sure enough: "Can you do mine?!"

With a grin from ear to ear, Rika shoved a bright red phone under his nose. It was nice when people didn’t shy away like any incidental brush up against him carried the touch of death, though.

"Sure," Hei said, smiling faintly. He took the phone and called on his power.

"Coooooool!" Rika stage-whispered. The splashing of dishwater paused as Ou whistled appreciatively.

Hei’s own phone beeped. Switching Rika’s to his other hand, he took his own plain silver model from his pocket and flipped it open. Ishizaki from Astronomy had sent him a text.

[what was that?? You’ve been out for like a DAY, what happened??]

[my phone charger party trick], Hei texted back.

Ishizaki’s answer came faster than human anatomy should allow, if you asked him, but he’d long since stopped questioning that.

[is that what i think it is or does the missus need to come pick you up]

...‘the missus’ meaning Kirihara, no doubt, and ‘come pick you up’ meaning kick down the door, guns blazing.

"Rika, could I take your picture?" Hei asked, frowning thoughtfully at the little screen of his phone. "My boss wants to know why I used my power just now."

Rika cocked her head. "Huh? How do they know about that?"

"They always know."

"Eh?!" Clutching her tray to her chest, she looked around frantically. "Are they watching us?!"

"No, no, they can tell by the light of my star," Hei said placatingly, and gestured with her phone. "It fluctuates when I do this."

"Oh," Rika said, with one last uncertain look around. "Well, okay then. Nothing weird, though."

"Nothing weird at all," Hei promised with a smile.

He snapped a picture of Rika holding up her newly charged phone, pointing at the lit screen and grinning widely, while Ou leaned around the pile of dishes behind her, waving. And he sent it to Ishizaki along with: [phone charged = owner’s daughter happy]

[we need to go over emergency codes], Ishizaki wrote after a few minutes delay. What she might have been doing in that time, Hei declined to contemplate.

[probably a good idea, yes]

Rika wandered off again, and Hei headed over to Ou to pay for his meal.

"Thank you for the food," he said. After a moment’s hesitation, he added: "And the friendly words."

Nodding airily, Ou waved a sudsy hand for Hei to just put his money on the counter somewhere and went back to washing dishes. "You were always a good customer, Li. Never caused any trouble. We’d be honored to have a member of the police force as a regular."

"I’ll definitely come again, then," he said, smiling slightly, and inclined his head.

 

Rika was rattling a box of cat treats around the playground behind the restaurant and calling out a name Hei recognized. There was no sign of its bearer, but it called to Hei, haunting, like a siren song.

"Hernandez! Here, kitty kitty. Hernandez..." She looked up when she heard his approaching footsteps. "Oh, Mister Li, are you leaving?"

"Yes. Thank you for the meal."

She nodded. "Thank you for eating at Home Run House."

"That cat is still around?" Hei asked. His voice sounded funny to his own ears.

"More than ever, actually!" Rika said cheerfully. "We sort of adopted him."

"Really?"

Rika looked around. "Yeah, one day he suddenly stopped showing up, and we worried that he may have gotten hurt or something. But eventually he came back, far too skinny, and he started hanging around more and more often. He even snuck into the restaurant and our apartment upstairs, like he was trying to adopt us. But he had a collar and that chip in his ear, so obviously he wasn’t a stray. We put up flyers around the neighborhood and posts on the internet, and we took him to the vet to get that chip checked out. But nothing ever came of it. So we let him move in. For now."

She rattled the box of treats again, and this time an old, familiar jingling came their way.

"Meow-ow-ow!" a black shadow trotting through the gloom said.

"Ah, there you are Hernandez! Come to mommy."

Beaming, Rika stooped to pick up the cat, who came happily and pushed his head into the hollow of her throat for snuggles. Giggling, she gave him the welcome he demanded. He was so happy to demand endless scritches, he didn’t even look at the box of treats.

Hei swallowed past an unexpected tickle in his throat.

Eventually, Rika showed him the cat’s ear, which was missing a chunk. "The vet had to remove the chip because his ear had gotten infected. It doesn’t seem to do anything, but we keep it in a box upstairs, just in case."

"Maybe he had an elderly owner who died."

He held out his hand. The cat sniffed his fingers, vigorously and at great length.

"Maybe," Rika said. "Obviously we’ll give him back if anyone ever comes for him, but in the meantime, I’m glad to have him."

Almost as if he was trying to figure something out. Trying to remember.

Though he was probably just interested in the smell of food clinging to Hei’s hand, or the unfamiliar environment of the Public Safety Bureau lingering on his skin and in his clothes.

Rika edged a little closer to him and raised ‘Hernandez’ a little higher against her chest. Hei wouldn’t have dreamed of petting him three years ago, but...

Eyes closing, the cat inclined its head and nuzzled the top of its head into his hand. Hei dug his fingers into his fur, and obliged.

_It’s good to see you again, partner._

"I’m sure he’s glad he has a good home to turn to, too," Hei said softly, when he finally made to leave. "See you."

"See you," Rika echoed.

When he walked away, hands stuffed in his pockets, he just caught Rika whispering: "Looks like daddy was right, huh, Hernandez? He’s not so scary at all."


End file.
